graze

From Old English grasian (“to feed on grass”), from græs (“grass”).

• IPA^(key): /ɡɹeɪz/

• Audio (US)

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• Homophones: grays, greys
• Rhymes: -eɪz

graze (plural grazes)

1. The act of grazing; a scratching or injuring lightly on passing.
2. A light abrasion; a slight scratch.

graze (third-person singular simple present grazes, present participle grazing, simple past and past participle grazed)

1. (transitive) To feed or supply (cattle, sheep, etc.) with grass; to furnish pasture for.
   • Jonathan Swift

     a field or two to graze his cows

   • 1999: Although it is perfectly good meadowland, none of the villagers has ever grazed animals on the meadow on the other side of the wall. — Stardust, Neil Gaiman, page 4 (2001 Perennial Edition).
2. (transitive, intransitive) To feed on; to eat (growing herbage); to eat grass from (a pasture)

   Cattle graze in the meadows.

   • Alexander Pope

     The lambs with wolves shall graze the verdant mead.

   • 1993, John Montroll, Origami Inside-Out (page 41)

     The bird [Canada goose] is more often found on land than other waterfowl because of its love for seeds and grains. The long neck is well adapted for grazing.

3. (transitive) To tend (cattle, etc.) while grazing.
   • 1596-98, William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, act I, scene iii:

     Shylock: When Jacob grazed his uncle Laban's sheep

4. (transitive) To rub or touch lightly the surface of (a thing) in passing.

   the bullet grazed the wall

   • 1851, Herman Melville, Moby Dick, chapter 23

     But in that gale, the port, the land, is that ship’s direst jeopardy; she must fly all hospitality; one touch of land, though it but graze the keel, would make her shudder through and through.

5. (transitive) To cause a slight wound to; to scratch.

   to graze one's knee

6. (intransitive) To yield grass for grazing.
   • Francis Bacon

     The sewers must be kept so as the water may not stay too long in the spring; for then the ground continueth the wet, whereby it will never graze to purpose that year.

• Earth-grazing
• overgraze

• Garzê, Zager, gazer

graze

1. (archaic) singular present subjunctive of grazen